It was a case of too little, too late for Martin Oil against Juniata VFW at Juniata on Tuesday evening. The host VFW club jumped out with four runs in the bottom of the second against Martin Oil right Trey Mock and then cruised to a 5-3 win.
\nIt was the first win after three straight losses for Juniata VFW (1-3), while Martin Oil (2-1) suffered their first loss after opening the George B. Kelley Federation season with a pair of wins over the weekend.
\nDown 4-0, Martin Oil finally got on the scoreboard against Juniata VFW starter Andy Lytle with a run in the top of the third inning, only to have the VFW club get that score back with one of their own in the home half of the inning.
\nMock led off the third with a walk and with one down, Brian Hostler beat out an infield hit. Justin Manning drew a walk to load the bases. Earnie Kelley scored courtesy runner Cameron Irvin, running for Mock, with a sacrifice fly, but Manning was thrown out in a rundown for the final out of the inning.
\nAn inning later, Martin Oil closed to within 5-3 with a pair of scores in the top of the fourth.
\nGarrett Rabold drilled a double to left center with one gone. Jimmy Watters worked a two-out walk to put runners at first and second. Mock singled to score Rabold and when Juniata VFW threw the ball around, Watters came home as well, with Mock going to second.
\nWith Martin Oil down to their final at-bat, Mock and Jake Manning opened the seventh inning with singles, and Hostler was safe when his bunt attempt was thrown away, to load the bases with nobody out.
\nLytle reached back and took control of the situation, striking out Justin Manning on a 3-2 pitch, inducing Kelley to line a shot to third that Wes Plummer knocked down and threw home for the force out of Mock, and then getting Chad Coho on a ground out to Plummer.
\nKelley pitched the final four innings for Martin Oil, limiting Juniata VFW to no runs, on just one hit, with seven strikeouts and no walks.
\nLytle gave up three runs on seven hits, with nine strikeouts and three walks to pick up the complete-game win.
\n\u201cWe just ran out of gas at the end,\u201d explained Martin Oil manager Ed Davis. \u201cEarnie came in and shut the door, holding everything to the status quo – five runs. We pecked away a little bit and had the bases loaded down only 5-3, and couldn\u2019t get the key hit in the top of the seventh. A couple other places, we needed hits, we didn\u2019t get them. We\u2019ll just have to come back tomorrow and try again.\u201d
\nMartin Oil will host Sheetz at Stadium Drive field in Bellwood at 6 p.m. this evening.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It was a case of too little, too late for Martin Oil against Juniata VFW at Juniata on Tuesday evening. The host VFW club jumped out with four runs in the bottom of the second against Martin Oil right Trey Mock and then cruised to a 5-3 win. It was the first win after three […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports-news-in-the-tyrone-pennsylvania-area"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38886"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38886\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}